City, state to clear out 'Jungle' homeless camp

"The Jungle," an unauthorized homeless encampment under Interstate 5 in Sodo is set to be cleared out and cleaned up, once and for all, according to plans laid out by city and state officials Tuesday.

"The Jungle," an unauthorized homeless encampment under Interstate 5 in Sodo is set to be cleared out and cleaned up, once and for all, according to plans laid out by city and state officials Tuesday.

Photo: GENNA MARTIN, SEATTLEPI.COM

Photo: GENNA MARTIN, SEATTLEPI.COM

Image
1of/10

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 10

"The Jungle," an unauthorized homeless encampment under Interstate 5 in Sodo is set to be cleared out and cleaned up, once and for all, according to plans laid out by city and state officials Tuesday.

"The Jungle," an unauthorized homeless encampment under Interstate 5 in Sodo is set to be cleared out and cleaned up, once and for all, according to plans laid out by city and state officials Tuesday.

Photo: GENNA MARTIN, SEATTLEPI.COM

City, state to clear out 'Jungle' homeless camp

1 / 10

Back to Gallery

Roughly four months after a deadly shooting in a homeless camp under Interstate 5 in South Seattle, the city and other agencies are moving forward with a plan to clear it out -- once and for all.

At a news conference Tuesday, officials laid out a plan to first urge people camped in the area known as "the Jungle" to find shelter elsewhere, then clean up the area and -- through an as-yet-unreleased plan -- secure the space against future encampments.

The Seattle Department of Transportation is working with a consulting firm to come up with the details that may or may not include a fence to keep people from returning to the area as they have after past cleanups.

But officials from the city, state and Seattle's Union Gospel Mission, focused on helping the 300 or so who are estimated to be living in the area to find more permanent shelter and get connected to the other services they might need during a roughly two-week outreach set to begin next week.

"Our primary goal there is to meet them there as individuals," said Jeff Lilley, president of the Union Gospel Mission, during the news conference "Rather than seeing it as a location and a big group of people, we're going to be going out one-by-one, getting to know them, understanding their personal challenges and coming up with strategies about where we can get them to that's both safer for them and for our entire community."

Once the outreach period wraps up -- and no specific date is set -- any remaining homeless will be asked to leave by police, though Scott Lindsay, special assistant to Mayor Ed Murray, said he didn't expect arrests.

Funding for the multi-agency project will come from $1 million that was included in the state supplemental transportation budget earmarked for cleaning up the area.

A large part of that funding will go to the Washington State Department of Transportation to clean up the areas under I-5 and restore access for maintenance and emergency services, said Dave McCormick, assistant regional administrator for WSDOT.

The shooting in late January left two dead and three wounded and triggered an assessment of "the Jungle," a sweeping unauthorized homeless camp under and within the I-5 greenbelt south of downtown from roughly South Dearborn Street to South Lucille Street.

And since the shooting, the Seattle Fire Department -- which responds to calls in the area regularly -- has required police escorts for any responses there, a first for the city, officials said Tuesday.

"The two miles here that we're focusing on today is certainly some of the most troublesome pieces of infrastructure that we have," McCormick said Tuesday. "I'm very excited to have the team that we have to work on these safety issues."

After the assessment, a host of ideas for cleaning up the area was tossed around, including a fence to keep people from returning to the area. The fence drew enough controversy that it's at least not front and center in Tuesday's plans.

Officials also said they estimate that fewer people are living in the area than when the February assessment was done -- perhaps 300 or fewer -- and Lilley, with the Union Gospel Mission, said he hopes to persuade all of them to transition to shelter where they can get better access to services and find their way to permanent housing.

"I think we're all aware that not all of them are going to move toward shelter," Lilley said. "We're going to do our best to provide just about any option that's reasonable."